Saturday, 31 December 2011

Happy New Year! From me, and from all the crew at MJN Air. Which, I am happy to be able to tell you, WILL be returning for a fourth series. We don't know when yet, but my best guess is sometime in the second half of this year.

Thank you for reading, and for all your nice comments about my drawings this month. Normal service will now be resumed.

Friday, 30 December 2011

Hello, hope you had the merriest of Christmasses. If you are wondering where the twenty-forth thing I drew this month is, it will be here tomorrow. In the meantime, you might enjoy listening to the Radio Four Panto I wrote with my friend and ex double act partner Kevin Baker. It's on at 6.15 tonight, stars Sandi Toksvig and Andy Hamilton, and features loads and loads of other Radio Four names, from Kirsty Young to Nicholas Parsons. If you like Radio Four, I think you'll enjoy it. If you don't listen to Radio Four much, it will be largely incomprehensible.

Saturday, 17 December 2011

There is actually a perfectly good explanation for why I have spent some of this evening making a paper model of a tube train driven by Queen Victoria, and carrying, among others, Isaac Newton, Morecambe and Wise, Henry VIII and Winnie the Pooh.

Monday, 12 December 2011

I was away at the weekend, so I took a sketchbook, and tried doing some quick, rough sketches of people unlucky enough to sit near me, before they either moved or noticed. Also, to encourage me to be fast and loose, I tried not rubbing anything out; with mixed results, as you'll see.

On the train up:

In a cafe: (That's a tumbler of orange juice in front of him; he's not a giant with a pint.)

Sunday, 11 December 2011

Yes, that last one was meant to be Stephen Fry, but it didn't quite come off. The mouth is all wrong. Similarly, this one is meant to be William Hague, and has also not quite come off. Caricature is hard. You see, this is why I normally make faces up - then you can't get them wrong.

Friday, 9 December 2011

Funny how one thing leads to another. The monsters came from the buffalo, but then I had such fun drawing the big guy at the back that I spent an hour today doodling thugs and villains. This one's my favourite.

Saturday, 3 December 2011

Given that the word 'buffalo' is the name of an animal, a city in America where that animal could theoretically be found and a verb meaning to bully; the following sentence, invented by linguist William J. Rapaport, is grammatically correct: 'Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.' The meaning is that buffalo from Buffalo who are buffaloed by other buffalo from Buffalo, themselves go on to buffalo a third group of buffalo from Buffalo. A tragic glimpse there into the vicious cycle of abuse rife in the bison community of upstate New York. William J. Rapaport, by the way, is an associate professor at the University of Buffalo. So, presumably, this is all based on an eye-witness account. Anyway, the point is... here is a drawing of a buffalo.

Thursday, 1 December 2011

Ok, this blog needs a bit of a kick to get it moving again, so just for a month I'm going to turn it into a sketchbook-blog. Every day from today until Christmas Eve, I'm going to post something I've drawn that day. Like a sort of horrible advent calendar, only instead of charming pictures of robins and snowmen; dodgily shaded pictures of grumpy old men. Speaking of which...

It's of a man I sat opposite on the tube. I call it 'Man I Sat Opposite On The Tube'.